Breaking
by Lavenderangel
Summary: Set before the series, key moments in the girl's lives. 2?
1. Breaking Carmen

Title: Breaking Author: Lala Rating: PG at the most Summary: From the point of view of a 7-year-old Carmen as she tries to understand why her parents are always yelling and why her daddy gets mad and leaves a lot.  
Author's notes: This is my first Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants fic. I'm sorry if anyone's extremely out of character. This will be updated frequently and won't be that long, probably only 5 chapters. Please leave reviews of any kind, and if anyone were interested in betaing, I'd be eternally grateful.  
Disclaimer: The characters within do not belong to me. I'm just borrowing them to make things angsty. I mean interesting. J

Prologue

She's not quite sure what's happening. She woke up because someone was yelling and then her mommy was picking her up and putting her in the car. Her mommy never carries her, so something must be really wrong.

She falls asleep in the car and wakes up when they stop. They're at Lena's, she's pretty sure. They ring the doorbell and Carmen notices sleepily that they're both in their pajamas.

Carmen's too tired to understand what her mom and Lena's mom are saying, but her mommy's crying.

Lena's mom takes Carmen to Lena's room. Lena's asleep and Carmen gets into bed with her, feeling a little scared. She wishes she brought her teddy bear.

Lena's mom gives Lena a kiss on the cheek before she leaves and Carmen wishes her mommy would come kiss her, but she doesn't. Not while Carmen's awake, at least.

---

Carmen wakes up the next morning with Lena staring at her.

"What are you doing here?"

"I don't know." Carmen sits up, struggling to remember. "My mommy brought me here last night."

"How come?" Lena's getting out of bed, looking through her clothes. Carmen wishes her mom would let her dress herself but Carmen's outfits never match.

"Where is your mommy?" Lena's putting on a green sundress now.

"I don't know." Carmen's starting to feel scared again and Lena comes over to her. Carmen gets out of bed, and they walk out of Lena's room hand-in-hand.

"Hi, girls." Lena's mom's drinking coffee and Effy's eating Lucky Charms when Carmen and Lena come in the kitchen.

"Do you know where my mommy is?" Carmen's voice comes out small and she hopes Lena's mom heard her. If she tries to talk again, the tears might sneak up on her.

Lena's mom smiles at Carmen, but it doesn't look happy. It reminds Carmen of her dolls smiles; forced and fake.

"Your mommy's at home," Lena's mom tells her, while Lena goes to make toast. Carmen's not even allowed to play with matches. How come Lena can make toast?

"Can I go see her?" Carmen wonders if Lena's mom will let her try and make toast? It doesn't look that hard. Lena's just standing there, watching it cook. But her mommy's more important than toast.

"You can see her after school," Lena's mom tells her.

"After school?" Carmen doesn't want to wait until after school. She wants her mommy now!

"Mommy, look! I made a picture!" Effy's taken the cereal out of her bowl and put it in weird shapes all over the table. Carmen wants to do that, but she wants her mommy more.

Lena's mom goes to clean up the mess and Effy starts crying. Carmen wants to ask more questions but Lena's mom's not listening and Lena's busy putting butter on her perfect toast, so Carmen doesn't want to talk to her.

---

It's after school, and Carmen still hasn't seen her mommy.

Lena's mom picked them up, and took them here, to Bridget's. Tibby was already here.

Usually, Carmen will complain that Tibby always gets out of school before the rest of them do, but she doesn't care. Right now, all she cares about is seeing her mommy and daddy. Especially her mommy.

"Hey, isn't that Leny's shirt?" Bee's playing with a soccer ball. Bee asked her to play, but she doesn't wanna. She just wants to go home.

"Uh huh." Carmen tugs at her shirt, which is too big and pretty to wear to school.

"Why are you wearing Lena's shirt?" Tibby's sitting on the swing. So is Lena.

"My mommy took me to her house last night."

"Like a sleep over? Why?" Bee kicks the ball and it bounces away.

"Dunno," Carmen says. "There was some yelling though."

"What kind of yelling?" Bee's chasing after her ball and Carmen wishes she'd just stop talking about it.

"I was asleep, stupid. I wasn't listening."

Bee stops chasing the ball and Lena gasps. Tibby just looks at Carmen.

"Carma," she says quietly.

Carmen looks down at the ground and doesn't say anything. Part of her wants to be mad at Bee but most of hers just sad. Besides, if she stays mad Bee might leave and not talk to her for a while, like her daddy sometimes does with her mommy.

"I'm sorry Bridget." Carmen's voice shakes halfway through Bridget's name but she knows she has to say it. They made a rule to never call each other stupid. Ever. Best friends aren't s'posed to call each other names.

"It's just kinda scary, that's all. I don't like it when mommy and daddy fight. Daddy leaves and I don't know where he goes," Carmen says quietly.

Her voice goes up and down as she talks and even though she's not looking at anyone, Carmen knows they know she's crying.

."That's okay," Bee says. She comes and stands by Carmen. "Let's not fight like your mommy and daddy, kay?"

Carmen nods and Bee puts an arm around her. Tibby gets up and hugs Carmen from the other side. Lena comes to stand in front of Carmen, holding her hand like she did this morning.

And they stay like that until Carmen stops crying, even though Perry's come outside and is staring at them.

Best friends don't care 'bout stuff like that. 


	2. Cold Bridget

Author's notes: Originally, Breaking was going to be a story focusing on Carmen. But because 7-year-old's are hard to write, and I wanted to explore angst, I decided to do one chapter about each girl, focusing on one hardship in their lives. Maybe I'll do a fifth chapter when they all get their period's or something. Who knows.

Anyway, this one's exclusively Tibby/Bridget friendship, because… well just because. I kind of want to do a femslash fic one of these days, but I don't want to be the first. Anyway, I don't want to ruin the girl's friendship by turning it into a romance. But that's completely off topic.

Thanks for the reviews for the first chapter, especially to Julia, who sort of gave me the idea. Thanks for the suggestion!

One last thing: I don't have my copy of the first book with me sobs, and I couldn't remember for the life of me if Bee's mom died when she was 9 or 11. I was 99 sure it was 11, so I tried to write like an 11-year-old. I'm pretty sure I failed miserably, but here we go.

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Cold.

It's cold here, lying in the dark of Tibby's room. Bee slides deeper under her blankets, wishing she'd brought a stuffed animal or something so she wouldn't be alone down here.

Whenever they have sleepovers, they all sleep on the floor, so it'll be fair. But it is always the four of them, always. Except for emergencies.

Bridget guesses this is an emergency, kind of. Her dad's absorbing himself in paperwork of some kind, probably just to keep busy, and Bee doesn't know where Perry's staying.

She doesn't know where her mom is either, but she hasn't for a while.

She wonders if it's cold wherever Marley is. The ground had looked cold earlier that day, but you couldn't feel when you were dead.

On the few occasions she's slept over by herself at Carmen's or Tibby's or Lena's, they've always shared the bed. But Alice had already laid blankets out on the floor when Tibby and Bridget had come to bed, and Bridget had almost clung to them, desperate for that motherry smell that never came.

She doesn't know if Tibby's asleep. They usually talk, the four of them, long hours into the night. Bee hasn't talked much since Tuesday, when she'd come home and…

She wouldn't think about it. She couldn't.

She just needs to get warm, and then maybe she can sleep. She wonders if Tibby would mind if she got into bed with her. Tibby doesn't like hugs much, which was one of the reasons Bee was happy she was staying here at least for tonight.

Bee likes hugs all right, but she hadn't hugged anyone, not even at the funeral. She'd let Lena hold her hand, and Carmen and Tibby had stuck close. But that full body contact was just too terrifying to attempt just yet.

She wants to say something to Tibby, just to make some kind of noise. Noise is distracting; Bee likes distractions.

"Are you cold?" She whispers, because she's afraid her voice might not work if she tries for anything more.

"No," Tibby says quietly. Mimi rustles in her cage and Bee wants to pet her but restrains herself. Tibby is very possessive when it comes to her guinea pig.

Bee had been very possessive over her mother.

"I knew things weren't… weren't right," she says unexpectedly. "She stopped laughing and sometimes she – she'd just never get out of bed. But when I… and she…"

She doesn't know what she's saying. She hears Tibby moving around but Tibby doesn't say anything.

"It's not fair. She didn't even say good bye." Maybe that was better though; but nothing felt better right now.

"It isn't fair." She's glad when Bee agrees with her instead of trying to make it better by lying.

"She's probably happier, but I could've made her happy. Do you… do you think if I'd done ballet again last year instead of soccer like she'd wanted, do you think she would be here?"

"No," Tibby says quietly. She's moving again.

"Yes, yes she would!" Tibby's supposed to agree with her; she's supposed to be on Bridget's side.

"It had nothing to do with you. She was sick, Bee; she's probably been sick for a while."

"No, no! It was my fault! I should have taken ballet and I should have gotten home sooner and I should have…"

She doesn't know what to say but even if she did she wouldn't be able to. Tears spring burning to her eyes. They make a path of fire down her face but don't warm her at all.

She doesn't sob; she never really has. Marley didn't, so Bee shouldn't. Maybe Marley's watching her and she'll be happy that Bee's crying strong.

"Scoot over," Tibby's voice says suddenly close. It's not soft and gentle, like everyone has been talking lately. It's matter of fact; it's Tibby's way of saying it's okay, even though it's not. She's brought her comforter she keeps in her closet and flops down next to Bee. Bridget's not facing her and Tibby doesn't ask her to. She just lies close and tucks the blanket around them both.

And when Bee thinks she's asleep, she turns over and cries, her face almost in Tibby's hair.

And Tibby grabs her awkward and hard, and holds on tight. Bee's scared at first, trying to get away.

Then she let's herself go and squeezes Tibby back, letting the sobs out safe against Tibby's Mickey Mouse pajama top.

And slowly, without her realizing it, the cold begins to fade a little. 


End file.
